Hey Obama, It’s Buy or Bye In PA!
Philadelphia has a long tradition which Obama is refusing to go along with:
Fourteen months into a campaign that has the feel of a movement, Sen. Barack Obama has collided with the gritty political traditions of Philadelphia, where ward bosses love their candidates, but also expect them to pay up.
The dispute centers on the dispensing of “street money,” a long-standing Philadelphia ritual in which candidates deliver cash to the city’s Democratic operatives in return for getting out the vote.
Flush with payments from well-funded campaigns, the ward leaders and Democratic Party bosses typically spread out the cash in the days before the election, handing $10, $20 and $50 bills to the foot soldiers and loyalists who make up the party’s workforce.
It is all legal — but Obama’s people are telling the local bosses he won’t pay.
Obama is currently spending $2.2 million per week on television ads, but Philly is the city he is hoping to get to keep his loss to Hillary at a minimum. Philadelphia has a heavy African-American population, and his refusal to pay up could cost him:
Carol Ann Campbell, a ward leader and Democratic superdelegate who supports Obama, estimated that the amount of street money Obama would need to lay out for election day is $400,000 to $500,000.
“This is a machine city, and ward leaders have to pay their committee people,” Campbell said. “Barack Obama’s campaign doesn’t pay workers, and I guarantee you if they don’t put up some money for those street workers, those leaders will most likely take Clinton money. It won’t stop him from winning Philadelphia, but he won’t come out with the numbers that he needs” to win the state.
A neutral observer, state Rep. Dwight Evans, whose district is in northwest Philadelphia, said there might be a racial subtext to the dispute. Ward leaders, he said, see Obama airing millions of dollars worth of television ads in the city — money that benefits largely white station owners, feeding resentment. People wonder why Obama isn’t sharing the largesse with the largely African American field workers trying to get him elected, Evans said.
“They view it that the white people are getting all the money for TV,” said Evans, an African American and former ward leader. “And they’re the ones who are the foot soldiers on the street. They’re predominantly African Americans, and they’re not the ones who are getting that TV money.”
Hardscrabble neighborhoods across the city have come to depend on street money as a welcome payday for knocking on doors, handing out leaflets and speaking to voters as they arrive at polling places.Peter Wilson, a ward leader from West Philadelphia, said: “Most of the ward leaders, we live in a very poor area, and people look forward to election days. . . . People are astute. They know the Obama campaign has raised millions of dollars.”
Hope or Change?
April 11, 2008 - 11:42 AM on April 11th, 2008
You’d think Obama would understand and accept this reality, given he comes from the mean streets and wide sewers of Chicago politics.
What, he’s okay with the Chicago payolas, but don’t wanna grease the Philly boys? What?
April 11, 2008 - 11:49 AM on April 11th, 2008
I have a most unrelated comment i’d like to make.
In the 2004 election, the Democrats contended that John Kerry was a better candiate than Geore Bush. Much of this claim was based on the fact that John Kerry served in Viet Nam. This was thrown in the voter;s faces by not just The Dems, but John kerry himself.
So, here comes the 2008 elections. John McCain served in Viet Nam, however neither of the Democrat candidates served.
Is this hypocrisy on the Dems part?
April 11, 2008 - 12:23 PM on April 11th, 2008
2. Yes, it is hypocrisy. But then again, when wasn’t a dem a hypocrite?
April 11, 2008 - 12:31 PM on April 11th, 2008
It is in their very nature, their very essence. That is why I call them “democrites”.